FROM our perspective on the brink
of the twenty-first century, it's hard to believe that the monumental Star
Wars trilogy originated as a low-profile experiment on a shoestring
budget. Twenty years later, its impact on American culture--film and otherwise--is
undisputed, and creator George Lucas has been canonized as a genius. Prior
to Star Wars, Lucas had directed only two feature films: the futuristic
drama THX 1138, which was a critical and commercial disappointment;
and the nostalgic hit American Graffiti. Despite the success of
the latter film, Lucas wasn't able to garner much industry support for
Star
Wars--his script was turned down by two studios before Twentieth Century
Fox agreed to bankroll the film.

Lucas estimates that due to budget
and technological constraints, the 1977 version of Star Wars lived
up to only about forty percent of its potential. While audiences around
the world were thrilling to the heroic exploits of Luke, Han, Leia, and
Obi-Wan, the filmmaker was feeling "really disappointed"--frowning all
the way to the bank. Over the next twenty years, overcoming the technological
constraints of film became a passion for Lucas: he has not directed a film
since Star Wars, and has instead devoted his time to improving technology
and special effects through his company, Industrial Light & Magic.

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Lucas on having the opportunity
to touch up Star Wars

There's a lot of things I was disappointed
about in [Star Wars], and I wasn't real happy with it when it came
out. I never felt it really got finished. I never expected to be able to
fix it. I mean, almost any filmmaker could go back and say "Gee, if I only
had another few days, some more money. I could really fix a lot of those
things that slipped by, that I'd give anything to fix at this point." I
was fortunate enough when this opportunity came up. I said, "This is my
chance! This is my chance to fix all those things." So I took it. I'm very
happy with it.

If you go back and you check the
interviews from when I made the movie, everybody said, "Oh, this is so
wonderful." And I said, "Well, it didn't turn out very well. It's only
about forty percent of what I wanted it to be. I'm really disappointed
in it." At every interview, relentlessly. Everyone I work with has been
hearing this for twenty years. As a matter of fact, I think they're relieved:
"Oh, he's finally going to do it. We won't have to listen to this anymore!"

The opportunity came along with
the twentieth-anniversary celebration. There were a lot of ideas bandied
about what we were going to do. Everybody both at Fox and Lucasfilms said,
"We've got to do something. This is an important thing to us, it's an important
thing to a lot of our fans, we should celebrate the fact that we've been
here for twenty years." I said, "If you're going to put that much money
into reissuing the movie, I want to get it right this time."

On the challenges of making Star
Wars and TheEmpireStrikes Back

Star Wars, you know, we had
this kind of low-budget, young director, and all these problems that we
had to cope with, which made the picture less than what it could be. Empire
was a much better situation. We had a lot more resources and [Irvin] Kershner's
a great director. So we really didn't have to change too much. Most of
what we changed were some things like Cloud City, which Kersh was complaining
about on the set. I was saying, "Look, they're just not going to let us
have any more set 'cause it costs too much." The idea of putting in digital
backgrounds, that didn't exist then. You wouldn't even think about doing
something like that. Same thing with the snow monster. We built a snow
monster; it just looked terrible. It was Kershner who said, "We can't let
this stay in here." And I said, "You're right, it's terrible." So we cut
it out. We had someone else do another little tiny puppet that we used
just marginally to give you the impression of a monster. But we all wanted
to have that monster. A lot of these things are things you want on the
set that you have to make compromises for. And you say, "Now we are going
to do it the way we wanted to do it then."

On altering the cantina confrontation
between Han Solo and Greedo

It was always meant that Greedo
fired first. In the original film you don't get that too well. But in terms
of Han's character, I didn't like the fact that when he was introduced
the first thing he did is just gun somebody down in cold blood. That wasn't
what was meant to be there. The other issue is a perception issue. We had
three different versions of that shot: one he fires very close to when
Han fires, one was three frames later, one was three frames later. And
we sort of looked at it and tried to figure out which one would be perceivable,
but wouldn't look corny. It's very hard to do that, because, I mean, obviously
if you know the film real well and you're looking for that you see it.
If you don't know the film very well and you're just watching the movie,
it almost goes right by you. People don't perceive what's happened there,
even now. So, it's trying to find that medium ground, and it's always this
way in film, of what can the majority of the audience perceive and what
can't they perceive. I like fast-paced movies--accusations have been made
about this--and I like things to go by in an almost surreal way. So I'm
caught between doing things that work for me--really understanding the
scenes and understanding what's going on--and the audience, which I know
is looking at something for the first time, and things go by in a very
different way. So, there's always the conflict about where you draw the
line. Perhaps I should have done it two frames sooner.

Lucas on special effects

Special effects don't make a movie;
the story makes the movie. All the special effects do is allow you to tell
a particular story. As a filmmaker . . . it's not like writing a book where
you can use words to create an imaginary world in the reader's mind. Film
is very literal. There's a certain kinetic reality that works that can
fool the audience. But, at the same time you're stuck with a very literal
interpretation of what's going on. You have to create something to photograph
that fools the audience into thinking they're creating an imaginary world
that allows them to function in this make-believe environment. Doing it
with words is much easier. You don't actually have to construct the things.
So the big drama is, how do you get some things constructed? How do you
create the illusion that something exists visually that doesn't? Whereas
if you write it down in a paragraph, that's great, that's easy. You just
sort of say, "The earth falls apart." It's no big deal--you can describe
it in detail as much as you want. But to try to actually show it is really
hard.

On mythology

Mythology, in general, is used to
convey certain social values, certain social precepts from one generation
to another generation. In the beginning, obviously, it was an oral tradition.
It was really designed to give the community a self, a cohesive set of
"thinking modules" that allowed them to be a society. And then these were
told in story form, because that was the best way to teach it. The lessons
were used in the form of metaphors and that sort of thing. So they weren't
direct, but the emotional content--the psychological imperative that's
implicit in these kinds of story telling--was handed down generation to
generation. . . . And obviously this tradition has gone on for thousands
of years.

In modern society, there is competition
from lots of other sources, media and better communication between people,
larger masses of people. The conscious use of mythology in a society has
kind of gone by the wayside. When I got into college, I studied anthropology
and I sort of got into this stuff. One of my instructors said that the
Western was the last of the American mythology and really probably one
of the last of the world mythologies that had been developed. In the sixties,
that all fell apart and Westerns went by the wayside--especially in the
film business, not necessarily in the literary field. As a popular myth
transport, we were sitting there with nothing specifically mythic. One
of the reasons I started doing the film was I was interested in creating
a new kind of myth and using space to do it, because that's the new frontier.

There's a lot of messages, themes,
dramatic issues that are pretty classic--you know, good and evil and friendships.
The structure of mythology, in terms of the hero's journey and that sort
of thing, is also fairly classic. Say there's only thirty-two plots in
the world and everyone does a variation of one of those thirty-two plots.
Mythology takes those thirty-two plots and puts them into a slightly more
structured context. Especially when it comes to the heroic part of this,
which is what I was dealing with. Mostly I was dealing with the hero-type
myth.

On Star Wars prequels
and sequels

I was pretty determined to get those
three movies finished. After the first film came out, and suddenly it was
a giant hit, I said, "Oh, I get to do these two movies." Everyone said,
"What [else] are you going to do?" I said, "Gee, I could do these back
stories too. That would be interesting." That's where the [idea of] starting
in episode four came [from], because I said, "Well, maybe I could make
three out of this back story." That evolved right around the time the film
was released, after I knew it was a success. Then everyone started saying,
"Are you going to do sequels?" I said, "Gosh, sequels. I guess I could
do sequels. I could do three of what happens later on." But that was really
an afterthought--I don't have scripts, I don't have any story. The only
notion on that one is wouldn't it be fun to get all the actors to come
back when they're like sixty or seventy years old, and make three more
that are about them as old people. And that's about as far as that one's
gone so far. The first six will get finished and will be the film. Whether
I go and do a sequel of this--because I'll also be seventy [Laughs]--I'm
not sure whether that's going to happen.